The Rotary Club of St. Albert is doing its best to combat hunger.
This spring, the club will hold a event to make 70,000 meals in one day to help feed hungry people in St. Albert and worldwide, hoping it will be an opportunity for the community to come together and make a tangible impact.
International committee chair Andre Charrois said he's excited to bring the event back after the last one eight years ago, during which he estimated they made around 100,000 meals, with the cost coming in between $30,000 and $35,000 USD.
"Lots of people came out of there pretty charged up about how good a day it was, and had a lot of fun. So our Rotary president this year, Darija Slokar, really wanted to have another community event again," Charrois said. "There were lots of great responses and a positive impact and they felt it was a really, really great day. So that's why we're back at it again."
This event, called St. Albert Stop Hunger Now, will take place on April 26 at the Salvation Army Gymnasium, with the ambitious goal of producing 70,000 meals. To achieve this, he said they're planning to operate in two shifts. One will be from 9 a.m. to noon, and the other will be from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., with about 10 tables of eight people for each shift making the meals. Charrois said the Salvation Army has been extremely vocal with the Rotary Club in their support for the event.
The Rotary Club will partner with Hope Mission, an international charity organization, but Charrois said it will also allow their event to help more people locally, instead of just worldwide.
"The nice part about this foundation, last time all of our meals went internationally right to one locale," he said. "This time, we can actually send some stuff locally. So the food bank has come onboard to accept some meals this year as well. So we'll have an international component and a local component."
Deryk Kirchner, international director at Hope Mission, is helping the Rotary Club put the event together. They've also partnered with other Alberta organizations to put on similar events, like Sherwood Park Against Hunger and Wetaskawin Fights Hunger.
Hope Mission provides the supplies and sets up in the space acquired by the St. Albert Rotary Club, which is responsible for recruiting the volunteers.
Kirchner said the meals will consist of vital nutritional components and ingredients that won't spoil easily.
"The two main ingredients are rice and lentils," he said. "Then there's also a vitamin package that includes all the vitamins that somebody would need for daily health, as well as some dried vegetables."
He said the construction of the meals is fairly basic, but it's so the different countries they're shipped to can enjoy them, despite varying tastes.
"Certain countries, you know, North America, we have quite a bit of sodium in our diet. So we're used to something that is savoury and a little bit salty. But sending that overseas to Africa, it might really go against what they're used to eating and they might not like it," he said. With the basic levels of nutrition met, the places they send the meals can add their own spices, meat, or more vegetables if they wish.
The official shelf life for the meals is three years, but Kirchner said as long as they're kept in a cool, dry space they "can last a pretty long time." They're packaged in heat-sealed plastic bags and shipped off in boxes. Each bag stores around six meals.
At the time of writing, Charrois said they have about 14 tables left to sell. But he could see them adding tables for if the event exceeds demand, and thinks they may be able to exceed 70,000 if they simply sell out their current tables.
"With the likelihood that we do sell out, it could be that we might be able to do 80,000 meals," he said. "We'll have to see on game day how things are going."
Charrois believes the event will help encourage togetherness and make an immediate impact in the local community and worldwide.
"Rotary Club members, generally speaking, like to do … hands-on events," he said. "Stuff where they can actually see that there's a benefit of who you're helping in a pretty immediate timeline."
Kirchner said this tangible effect is important and exciting for these events.
"A lot of times you might get asked 'Oh can you donate some money here?'" he said. "There's those types of interactions, but it's fairly unique in our current culture to have a really large group of people all coming together and accomplishing something. Things with teamwork. Using your hands to then accomplish something really awesome like packaging 70,000 meals for people in need."
"That's why it's important. Getting the community together to do something together," Charrois said. "People kind of develop great memories of this stuff, so we really are trying to get those things established and making sure that we're doing something not only to take care of our own causes locally, but realize that we're within Canada and that there's other countries that can certainly use our help."
Charrois hopes this year's upcoming event can have a similar, if not greater benefit than their previous one.
"We're hoping that people jump into this event like they did years ago," he said.
More information on the event is available at www.stalbertrotaryclub.com.
